Newsweek’s ‘New Media’ List Resembles Old Media

The new issue of Newsweek magazine is full of lists. This is a surefire way to generate buzz, since people are bound to disagree with who’s on your list– and then write about it.

Which is exactly what I’m doing.

But one of the lists really jumped out. The magazine selected the top “Opinionists,” who are apparently the “best online writers at war with the obvious.”

The first thing you notice is that two of the five judges are Newsweek-affiliated columnists: conservative David Frum and the right-leaning Andrew Sullivan. And who made the list of top opinion writers? Frum and Sullivan, naturally– the latter designated not in the mere top ten list, but with a lifetime achievement award.

The other obvious conclusion to draw from the list: White guys apparently do a lot of battling the obvious. The list of 10 consists of 9 white males; the exception to the rule is, unsurprisingly, Arianna Huffington.

The list isn’t entirely bad news: Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald makes the cut. It would be even harder to take a list like this seriously if he weren’t on it.

But the lesson would seem to be the same one Janine Jackson wrote about in Extra! (6/12). The “new media” space offers a nearly limitless array of commentary, punditry and reporting from virtually every perspective. So why is it that the new media elite resemble the old media elite?

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Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

I had a problem with Janine Jackson’s article in Extra! There are plenty of minority groups represented in the media, even if it is at a pathetically small percentage. But when all of these people come from the upper-middle and upper classes, it hardly adds to diversity of opinion.

I understand the problem. But as long as we have this kind of “affirmative action” approach to media where only white-male-approved minorities are allowed on the TV box and Internet machine, we are lost. Look: Karl Smith’s on the Internet! Michael Steele’s on the TV! Hilary Clinton’s at the White House!

@woodword burnstein – Ross Douthat does a lot of stuff online. And of course he’s on the list! He’s a conservative who isn’t a complete idiot (but he’s close enough for most purposes). So he’s a keeper in any Serious list of “important” political writers.

Newsweek is at War with Reality. Who’s bright idea was it anyway to make “News Digest Magazines”. A News Digest is just a deceptive term for “Spin and Propaganda”. People should be paying attention to what the facts of situations actually say, rather than letting other people with an agenda tell them what they want them to think it means. It’s just more of the Conservative Echochamber; never let a Truth get out Unspun, Unembellish or Unbiased. Who are these Newsweek writers that they deserve to have their spin on the news paid attention to? We see these same names over and over, occasionally with obscure “credentials” that few people ever bother to verify (and who frequently prove to not actually have said credentials), and these people with an agenda are being allowed to rewrite “Current History”. It should be a crime, not one of the most popular magazines in America!

There has always been a minority of smart and/or violent sociopaths with an overgrown sense of entitlement that has ruled over the majority. Because sociopaths have no conscience, they will do anything. They will kill and/or exploit anyone for power and wealth. At the same time there have always been self-serving narcissists who are willing to prostitute themselves to the ruling elite. They dream of someday being members of the “Big Boys Club”. These are politicians, PR geniuses, for-sale scientists, “journalists”, pundits, etc. So, expecting people who are paid to not have passion for truth and justice, to be shills for the ruling elite, and to obfuscate the truth is foolish.

What infuriates me is the average American who insists on remaining willfully ignorant and being controlled by their most reptilian drives. I think Americans are so deep in addiction (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, entertainment, vanity, sex, status, and now electronic gadgets) that they are in a bubble of denial and fog of confusion.

I often find myself wishing I could go back in time and take the blue pill!

Freespirit had some good points.Can’t say my experience has proven him wrong.Follow the tag writing about minorities in EXTRA 6/12.Just read an article on the lack of minorities at the top journalism schools.Top opinionists?What exactly is the criteria?Size of readership?

It’s just an opinion piece … on the top opinionists. Never mind what are the top opinionists, first start with: What’s an opinion-ist? This is not an especially useful word: the holder of any specified opinion and who puts it forward. I am a word … ist. And what are the ‘top journalism schools’? The ones other people say they are, in the opinion of some other opinionists. Or is it the ones that produce the ‘top journalists’, which is judged according to some more opinionists, or maybe themselves. Just give us some good, fine journalists who can report facts and truths as they find them simply and honestly. The more elite they become the less good journalism they can do.

But this is what passes for wisdom in the modern age. Opinions put forward on the value of other opinions. What can we discover objectively that proves the 56th is a topper opinionist than the 57th, but ever so slightly less top than the 55th?